DUBAI (Reuters) - An Australia cricket player has been approached by a bookmaker during the Ashes tour of England, the International Cricket Council (ICC) said on Wednesday.

"There is no evidence of any illegal activity as a result of this approach, which took place following the second test at Lord's in July," the ICC said in a statement.

"Approaches to players do happen and it would be naive to assume otherwise; if they did not then there would be no need for the continuing existence of the ACSU (Anti-Corruption and Security Unit)," the sport's governing body added.

"There is no indication that any matches in the current Ashes series or the ICC World Twenty20 2009 (in England in June) have been affected by corruption in any way and the ICC is confident the issue is under control.

"The ICC would like to place on record its praise for the player approached and the Australia team management for reporting the issue."

CLOSE CONTEST

The final test of the closely-contested Ashes begins at the Oval on Thursday with the series level at one-all.

Cricket Australia declined to comment on the player approach when contacted by Reuters.

Australian media reported a player was approached in the bar of the team's London hotel.

Captain Ricky Ponting was asked at a news conference on Wednesday what he had to say about the report and another allegation that an Australian player had been approached during this year's Twenty20 World Cup in England.

"Not much unfortunately," Ponting said. "As players and as a team we did everything we were supposed to by the letter of the law and reported everything to the ICC and, as you are aware, it's under ICC investigation.

"So there is no more we can say about it because of the investigation going on."

ICC INVESTIGATION

The report comes after an ICC investigation cleared Pakistan players last week of coming in contact with bookmakers during their recent tour in Sri Lanka.

The Pakistan Cricket Board informed the ICC it suspected bookmakers were staying on the same floor at their team hotel in Colombo after the tourists lost the test series 2-0 and had lost the first three games of their five-match one-day series.

The ICC said it did not want to reveal specific details of the latest incident because that could be counter-productive to the investigations being conducted by the ACSU.

"Cricket is more popular than ever before and with that popularity comes the opportunities for growth but also challenges such as the one highlighted by the approach to an Australian player," ICC general manager David Richardson said.

"The ICC, its members and the ACSU will continue to deal effectively with these challenges to ensure the game remains a great sport with a great spirit," he added.

(Additional reporting by Sanjay Rajan in Chennai and John Mehaffey in London)